


lost girls

by all_these_ghosts



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s07e11 Closure, F/M, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 19:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8502478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_these_ghosts/pseuds/all_these_ghosts
Summary: “You and Sam would be almost exactly the same age.”“I know.” She's always tried not to think about that, about what it might mean.





	

On the way back, past half-vacant strip malls and fields of dust, he doesn’t say a word. She drives and he stares out the window. Neon lights illuminate the planes of his face, but Mulder is all shadows tonight.  


She leads him by the hand into her room. His hands are freezing. This once, she’s willing to drop all pretense of propriety; this stopped being a regular case at the moment she sliced his mother open.  As soon as the door is closed he wraps his arms around her.

“I’m so worried about you,” she says, and he runs his hands up and down her back. Like she’s the one who needs comfort.

“You don’t have to be, Scully,” he says. “I told you. I’m fine.” She wants to believe him. It’s harder when after a moment, he adds, “You and Sam would be almost exactly the same age.”

“I know.” She's always tried not to think about that, about what it might mean.

He says, “I couldn’t save you either.” There’s no emotion in his voice when he says this; it’s just fact.

But she’s no victim, no lost girl to be rescued. And she always thought she was the one saving him. Her voice is hard. “I never asked you to.”

Slowly he nods, his lower lip tucked behind his teeth. Considering. He starts to undress her, almost by rote, like he’s reminding himself of each step: _now you unbutton her shirt, now you slide the fabric off her shoulders_. For once her skin is warmer than his. Her stomach muscles tighten when he presses his palm flat against her torso, sending a chill through her entire body.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, and the shiver inside her subsides.

She doesn’t say _always, Mulder_. Scully doesn’t make promises she can’t keep. 

She takes her time with him, too; presses herself against him to transmit some of her heat, pushes her thumbs into the long muscles of his back. 

In the dark they breathe together. She lays down on the white sheets and pulls him down on top of her. The dead don’t feel pain, but they don’t feel this, either: the weight of him, the way his toes curl when she takes him in her hand. She’s had seven years to learn his mind and eight weeks to learn his body, and Scully is a very good student.

In the morning everything will be different, directionless. With the long search over, he’ll have to find a new true north to point to. She will build a compass to guide them. They won’t get lost.


End file.
